ADAM Wheater will be aiming to silence a capacity Essex crowd when he returns to his home county for tonight’s Friends Life t20 showdown. Hampshire’s first-choice wicketkeeper-batsman will be playing his first game in front of a full house at Chelmsford’s Ford County Ground since his controversial move in March.

Tonight’s encounter, which begins at 7pm, has been sold out since Monday. It will include several friends of Wheater but not his parents, regulars at Hampshire this season but holidaying in Cyprus this week.

It will be interesting to see what sort of reception Wheater receives from what will be a beery, football-like crowd packed close to the boundary’s edge. He said: “It will be a great atmosphere, we’re all looking forward to it and I certainly don’t fear going back. “Some people behind the scenes won’t want to see me but I’ve got a lot of friends there, I grew up playing with the likes of Tom Westley and Tim Phillips. “But it will be a very different crowd to what you get there for a four-day game.

“A lot of them will be West Ham fans quicker to spot mistakes rather than being there as die-hard Essex supporters.

“As wicketkeeper I’ll be well away from the boundary and will just be concentrating on getting a win for Hampshire!”

Wheater’s return as a key player for the t20 champions provides significant interest in a match that has all the ingredients of a classic.

The 23 year-old has already been back to Essex this season in the LV County Championship and Yorkshire Bank 40 competitions.

Disappointments He was twice dismissed cheaply after lengthy spells at the crease in the four-wicket Championship defeat.

Having made one from 19 balls, he was caught trying to hook Essex’s highly-rated young left-arm quick Reece Topley in the first innings.

And, after 14 grafted runs from 72 balls in the second, he was caught behind against the metronomic seam-up of David Masters. No doubt those disappointments will see Wheater return to Essex even more determined to prove a point, should he be required to bat. A Chelmsford atmosphere that borders on hostile during the t20 season should bring out the best in a feisty player with no shortage of confidence following recent performances for Hampshire.

Not that everyone at Essex blames Wheater for leaving. Far from it. While the membership was up in arms at his departure it is the club’s hierarchy who most supporters hold responsible for letting a highly talented, homegrown local boy (Wheater was born in Whipps Cross) slip through the net. What rankled with Wheater was that Ben Foakes, a player three years his junior, usurped him in the wicketkeeping pecking order behind club captain James Foster. But he is now first-choice in all formats for the limited-overs double winners and has already experienced victory at Chelmsford as an away player. Hampshire won the opening game of their Yorkshire Bank 40 defence by nine wickets thanks to the brilliance of Michael Carberry and James Vince eight weeks ago.

But, with the antipodean duo of Hamish Rutherford and Shaun Tait as their two overseas players, Essex will be a different proposition tonight.